Starlight
by mustangisinflames
Summary: For the ZoSan Valentine Exchange. This is for xpiester333x. Inspired by Starlight by Muse. It's not a forbidden love, nor is it terrible. But there would always be one problem between them. Always one. ZoSan. Sci-fi setting.


_'Starlight, I will be chasing the starlight,_

_Until the end of my life._

_I don't know if it's worth it anymore.'_

_Starlight- Muse_

_'But I'll never let you go_

_If you promised not to fade away._

_Never fade away.'_

_Starlight- Muse_

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><p>Zoro looked at the digital clockface with a scowl which was directed at the numbers and abbreviated month '14 Feb'. Five years since he'd left home. Lightyears away from the little village he'd grown up in. Slowly he pushed himself up from his bunk, groaning as the stiffness of sleep left his body in the form of cracking joints and a popping spine and stood up. He stretched, the worn and faded black shirt riding up his stomach and then flopped his arms back down by his sides.<p>

Sluggishly, he stumbled to the other side of the Sunny and threw open one of the small white doors, grabbing clumsily for an apple and a can. When he'd succeeded, he staggered in a sleep drunk stupor to the control room, pretty much collapsing into the large plush armchair and staring out into the great black blue and purple vastness littered with its thousands of blazing stars that was space.

The Thousand Sunny was a small but elite fighter craft with enough room for a live in pilot and was operated by one pilot. Zoro had... borrowed it from a large city called Water 7 on some long since left behind planet he couldn't remember the name of. It was light and easy to handle and it had served Zoro well, very well.

Looking out the long stretched windscreen of the ship, Zoro watched as tiny clusters of stars passed by on the gentle pace of the auto-pilot and sunk his teeth into the apple, crunching it as he waited. Was he still out there? Zoro searched for the tell tale signs of luminous gas that usually streaked in random pathways amid the stars and space debris around, but he found none. Frowning, he cracked open his can of energy substitute drink and sipped at it passively, watching and waiting.

After an hour of still nothing, Zoro snatched up the microphone headset and put it on, "Oi, you still there?"

As soon as his words were out, there came a small tap on the right hand side of the room on the glass and Zoro sat up, head snapping round and smiled. Sat on one of the wings, looking in, was an alien. The alien was an entity that took the shape of a human. It was a deep set blue with miniature stars and galaxies in its body. It wasn't see through; literally, inside of its body were tiny little worlds and solar systems that no one from this dimension could ever dream of getting to. The alien sort of had a face, but it wasn't human by any means. It had one "eye", a distant burning sun that glowed hotly on the left side of its face, so intense and bright it was practically white, but its other eye did not exist, instead a band of orange and gold gases twirled and coiled where it should be and round its head and down its neck like locks of hair. It had no real nose to speak of but it had a mouth despite the lack of lips so it could talk.

"I'm here," The alien said, soft and low voice thrumming through the headset Zoro was wearing. The green haired human got to his feet.

"How're you, Sanji?" Zoro asked.

The silvery mouth smiled, "I am okay."

"How long've you been out there?" Zoro walked over to one of the touch screen computers.

Sanji folded his arms onto the window frame, "You've been asleep for... ten hours. I stayed here."

"You stayed that long?!"

"Yes. I already told you I don't have a home. I have nowhere else to be."

"Yeah, but still... Ten hours is a long time." Zoro murmured, pressing at the touch panels and frowning as he read with his one good eye, the other closed and marred by a rough and gnarled scar. Sanji pressed both palms to the window, the distant stars in his fingertips twinkling softly and lifted himself to get a better look at the screen. Zoro quirked an eyebrow, "Are you sitting on the wing?"

"Yes..." Sanji trailed off and the light pink band of a small galaxy thrummed a little brighter from where it was placed around where his collarbones should be, a sign Zoro had picked up on that meant the alien was curious, "What is that?" He asked, pointing, and Zoro looked down at the screen.

There was an advertisement selling gifts and cards glowing up at him from inside a heart shaped pop up box. Zoro scowled, "It's an advert."

Sanji hummed, the pink on his chest glowing ever lighter, "What for?"

"Valentine's day." Zoro said bitterly, pressing harder than he intended to shut the pop up box down. Sanji whined,

"But I wanted to read that!"

"It was nothing interesting." The green haired man snapped, a small pang of guilt hitting him when he saw Sanji flinch a little at his tone. He sighed, "I'm sorry. I just... Valentine's day is bad for me."

"Why?" Sanji asked, tilting his head to the side.

"It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago..."

"Oh..." Sanji suddenly pressed close to the glass and the voice came through Zoro's headset a little louder than usual, "Then tell me what Valentine's day is! Is it a sad day for everyone?"

Zoro couldn't help but smile at the almost childlike innocence of the alien. He'd only known this strange creature for a few months and it always struck him how curious Sanji could be at times, always wanting to know about the strange human customs and the even stranger planet they came from. But it was nice though, he liked this companionship. He liked how Sanji hung onto his every word, the only being in the whole of space who cared about what the rogue bounty hunter Zoro had to say about anything. Perhaps he liked it more than he should have... but then he liked Sanji more than he should've as well.

Grabbing the tall stool, Zoro carried it to in front of the window and climbed onto the seat smiling at the alien whom smiled back with his glittering silver mouth. The alien hoisted himself gracefully up onto the window ledge with one graceful movement and waited expectantly as Zoro settled himself and cleared his throat, "Well, back on Earth, Valentine's day is a way to show your love to someone special that you care about. Many people use it as a day to ask the people that they liked to go out with them-"

"Go out?" Sanji asked, "Go out where?"

Zoro chuckled, "Nah, not go out as in go to a place, but as in get them to be in a relationship with you. You know, like a boyfriend or a girlfriend."

"Ohhh... What are those?" Sanji asked.

"They're someone you want to be with and love and care for. On Valentine's day, they're called your 'Valentine'."

"Were you ever someone's Valentine?"

"No, I didn't have time for that. Plus, nobody was ever special enough for me anyway..." Zoro said, "But yeah, that's pretty much the gist of Valentine's day. I never really saw the point in it back home." He shrugged, watching with a strange sense of warmth in his chest as Sanji smiled widely.

"I think it sounds lovely... I'd like to be someone's Valentine..." He said wistfully. Zoro's eye trailed down, watching as the pinks and reds and light violets glowed softly in pastel colours, soft and gentle and a whole different universe away. It made him want to reach out and touch it, to feel the gases coil and play around his fingers, to hold the beautiful stars that dotted his body in his own hands. Sanji was beautiful but so dreamlike it was like he wasn't real at all.

"Zoro?"

Zoro blinked, snapping out of it, "Yeah?"

"Why don't you like Valentine's day?"

Zoro froze, looking into the dark inky blues and blacks with stars and arrays of fractured comets and rubble and the melancholic colours of gorgeous and unknown planets. The silvery mouth was a serious line and Zoro swallowed dryly, "A friend of mine... She died on this day years and years ago..." He blew out a harsh breath as memories of a distant past resurfaced from the deepest parts of his mind, "It was my fault. I was so stupid. So... So determined to beat her at swordfighting. I wanted to show her I was better, that I could beat her. I... I challenged her to a duel and she agreed." Zoro licked his lips tentatively, "It was just meant to be fun, Sanji. It wasn't supposed to happen... God... She went to sharpen her sword and it was raining and... and she slipped down the steps... It wasn't supposed to end like that. She died. The fall... it killed her. And if... And if I hadn't of been so stupid, so stubborn- unwilling to cancel the fight because of rain... She'd still be here. She'd still be alive..." Zoro opened his eye which he hadn't even realised he'd closed to see Sanji knelt up on the ledge with his hands flat to the glass.

"Don't be sad Zoro. Don't be sad. It wasn't your fault. Please smile again?" Sanji begged, the tone of his voice so solemn, so broken and Zoro saw the silver galaxy that nestled on his stomach turn a depressing shade of grey.

Zoro paused and suddenly laughed, the creases of the frown on his forehead smoothing out, "Don't be sad with me too, you idiot." He snickered.

The storm grey galaxy turned a brilliantly shimmering silver once again and a smile split on Sanji's face, "Then don't be sad anymore. I'm here so don't frown anymore."

Zoro sighed at the soft, soothing voice and leaned forward and out of his seat to place his hands against the glass where the other's were, the cold panel keeping them apart. Sanji looked down at them in slight admiration, looking at the size of Zoro's hands compared to his own and Zoro rested his forehead against the glass and looked too, a soft smile on his lips.

"I won't frown anymore."

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><p>Years past and Zoro still travelled, his alien with a whole other world inside him always by his side. When Zoro docked at planets for supplies, Sanji would wait in the highest point of its atmosphere for him to come back. When Zoro slept, he guarded the ship and when Zoro was injured or sick he'd press himself up close to the glass and fret until he was sure the green haired man wasn't in anymore danger of passing out.<p>

But more importantly on that one day every year, Sanji was Zoro's Valentine and Zoro was his. They spent the bounty hunter's every waking moment together, talking about important things or sometimes nothing at all. And Zoro kept his promise, he didn't frown anymore.

Well, he kept it to a certain extent because there was one problem with him and his alien, and there always would be.

They could never touch.

Sanji was made from burning stars and cosmic heat so intense that the only thing protecting Zoro from him was the Thousand Sunny. If they ever touched, Zoro would burn into nothing.

But that never stopped Sanji from placing his hand against the glass whilst Zoro slept. As though the tiny black hole in his palm in the distant galaxy that made up his body could pull the slumbering man into his grasp. It was like chasing starlight. Something that could never be obtained or held in either human or alien hands. But there it remained, burning brightly and beautifully but impossible to ever have.

Yet, even if it was just for one brief moment in time, he wanted to hold the human he loved in his arms.

And he'd give up the whole tiny universe living inside him, just to do that.

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><p>Happy Valentine's Day xpiester333x! :3<p> 


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